


Lullabies, Aubades

by Appleskin



Category: Homestuck
Genre: Basically an au where ghb is raising them, Family Fluff, Fluff without Plot, Gamzee is very tired, Grand highblood is a good dad, Grubs, Idk yall just take it, Kurloz is a good but overenthusiastic big brother, Makara family, Maybe more to come idk, pupation
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-03-03
Updated: 2016-03-03
Packaged: 2018-05-24 10:36:55
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,842
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6150829
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Appleskin/pseuds/Appleskin
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Probably just gonna be a dump for all my stand-alone shitty little makara family dabbles because I HAVE A PROBLEM.</p><p>Anyway Gamzee pupates and there's fluff</p>
            </blockquote>





	Lullabies, Aubades

Kurloz hardly approaches what you would consider to be a light sleeper. Neither of your boys are, in all fairness, though you are far from in any kind of position to be getting your judgement on, on account of how you to this very day are still needy-dependant on the blissful touch of sopor to curb the jagged edge of your dreams. If they can tip off into sleep and stay that way without daymares of their own to cause them fear, without the daytime drug, well then you must be doing something right.

Besides, it's cute as all motherfuck the way Kurloz bats complaining at your fronds when you shake him gentle, making tired little noises. You let yourself make noises back, soft little croon, and stroke his wild hair down between his little horns. He mumbles sleepily and then raises a fist to rub his tired eyes, opens them slowly, small silver moons in a golden sky. He trills at you, still more asleep than not, happy little sound at the sight and scent of you, and you laugh quietly at him and at yourself, at the way that little noise makes your pusher squeeze it's way up into your protein chute like it belongs behind your fangs instead of in your thorax.

You stroke his hair again with the pad of one frond, claw turned careful away from his skin. “Wake up, sweetling.” You say unto him with all the softness your voice can hold. “Come, up. It's time to rise and awaken.”

He sleeps still, fighting wakefulness, and he clings tightly to your fingers when you rest them on his stomach, makes like he thinks he’s gonna hold right the fuck on and cuddle your hand as he drifts back off, and you laugh louder this time, shake him just a touch more roughly. “Up now, wriggler. Or else we’re like to miss it.”

More complaining noises and a yawn full of tiny little fangs. You shake him again for good measure. This time when he bats at you you ease off and he sits up, groggy and annoyed as fuck at being woken up, looking up at you with a face fixed grumpy and frowning. You see the exact moment he realizes what you being here must mean, what the only reason you would wake him up at this time of day is. His eyes go wide and bright and a shiny with something more worry than true fear. You smile. 

“Let's go see your brother.”

When you reach out your boy crawls right into your hands and lets you scoop him up. You can carry him with one all around his thorax just fine, but with how late and how quiet this moment is you cradle him in both, let him curl up safe in the cup of your palms. It means you have to elbow your way through first the curtain out of Kurloz’s block and then, through the big block that makes their playroom, the curtain into Gamzee’s, but that's hardly even an inconvenience. 

Gamzee’s cocoon has gone gray and dull, flaking away in thin sheets. It's thinner and more transparent than it was when you went to get your oldest, still too thick for a newly-made wriggler to work their way out but getting there, and under the layers that make up the chrysalis you can just barely start to see movement as, after perigees of sleeping and growing and changing into new shapes, Gamzee finally begins to stir.

In the cradle of your hands, Kurloz gasps and leans forward to peek past your fingers. You grab him back and lower yourself onto the floor in front of the cocoon before you let him down. He makes like he's gonna go forward and touch it, but doesn't do more than shuffle closer, staring with eyes wide and breath held careful. 

“Gonna be a bit yet.” You tell him. “Not too long now, but he has only just started. Lay your patience with him for a few minutes.”

Reluctantly, Kurloz shuffles back and lets you pick him up and prop him on your knee, squirming with the impatience of his youth. In the quiet of the afternoon, you wait. 

The protective outer casing of the cocoon is slowly shed, sheet after sheet of paper-thin shielding dies and falls away, now and then being gently peeled off by the tips of your own claws, though you keep Kurloz’s paws well away for this part. Eventually you are greeted with the sight of a semitransparent shell, dull purple and hazy. Inside, there is movement. Inside, there is life.

Tiny prickles of pain draw your eyes to Kurloz again, to where the wriggler grips your hand so tightly across his thorax in his excitement that his tiny little claws try valiantly to bite at your finger. You squeeze him in gentle reassurance and release him from your hold.

This time he crawls right up to the cocoon and leans in close, just inches away, like he thinks maybe if he presses his face against it he'll be able to peer more closely at the form inside.  Keeps his fronds to himself though, clever child. 

Another moment passes where Gamzee is a dark shape, moving in jerky, uncertain movements, and you hands want to shake. You have a want to join Kurloz on the floor by the trembling cocoon and hover fearful over its passenger, but you sternly scold your fronds still and make yourself keep your ass where it has been put.

Gamzee will be fine. You've had medicullers in and out of this room for perigees looking over your youngest, and after Kurloz’s own pupation you at least have some experience. You aren't charging in blind and deaf this time, your boy is fine, and in a moment he will drag himself sticky and tired as fuck from his shell and you'll be back to fighting Kurloz’s hands away so that Gamzee can fucking rest without his brother poking at him.

That doesn't stop your fear, but in honestly you've been afraid for perigees, you've had fear sickly and cold in the pit of your thorax since Gamzee went under, and this is no different. You'll be afraid until you see him whole and unharmed with your own two damn oculars. 

Which means you'd best pay some damn attention, then, because the cocoon has started to shake in earnest.

Kurloz squeaks and jumps back to you again as Gamzee finally starts moving like he means it. You scoop him up into the cup of your hands and shuffle closer on your knees.

Wobble, wobble, shake. A still second. Wobble  _ thunk _ . A second again. Shake thunk  _ crack _ . A thin spiderweb works it's way across the cocoon. Shake shake. _Thunk_ , another crack, not quite in the same place. The spiderweb grows. Thunk thunk _crack_. Stillness. You reach out careful with your smallest claw, Kurloz’s nails back to trying to bite into your other hand, and press just a little, so fucking careful, at the edge of one of those cracks, just a little tiny bit. It widens. You twist. 

_ Snap _ a piece of cocoon breaks off, just a miniscule little shard, but it's enough. The next thunk and crack dislodges more, and you see a tiny little foot with five little toes before the foot is drawn back in so Gamzee can kick again. Again. 

There's a pretty sizable hole, now.

You reach again and hook a claw in it and pull up, and the top of the cocoon comes off in a harsh  _ snap _ and Gamzee goes spilling on out.

He's bigger than he was, skin gray instead of purple, body no longer a series of segments and graspy little grub legs, he is a torso with two skinny arms and two skinny legs and his grubscars are right on each side where they belong, not swollen or sunken or lopsided. His horns curve up from his head, a little dull, but thats to be expected with all the effort that went into making a new body. A few nights of good food and a quick polishing and they'll be back to a bright, healthy shine. His hair is a fucking mess, matted and nasty from the slime inside the cocoon.

He is whole, and there's no signs of pupation gone wrong. He isn't misshapen or deformed, he is thin and a bit brittle looking but so was Kurloz, so we're you, an ungodly amount of time ago.

Gamzee raises his head, and his eyes are gold and gray where before they were pure purple, and his pincers are gone. In their place he has a mouth with lips and tongue and tiny little fangs. He chirps at you.

Kurloz starts forward and you catch him close and hold him with one hand while you go about peeling away the rest of the bits of cocoon with the other, careful of Gamzee’s still oversensitive skin. He watches your fingers as they draw close and trills tiredly, but he's too exhausted to raise his head. In the meantime Kurloz fights your hand and stares.

Last he saw his brother he was a grub still, small and different than he is now, and if you have been worried then Kurloz has been a sentry, hardly leaving the cocoon behind for more than minutes at a time unless he was made by you. He had come to you more than once with complaint of bad dreams, his sleep filled with pictures of the cocoon gone empty and still, that maybe Gamzee would just not hatch, or maybe he'd come out wrong and twisted and not himself. Maybe he'd be whole but not breathing. 

Same fear as you, but in one so much younger. His relief must be near painful in its intensity. Still, Gamzee is fucking tired and has earned his rest. Kurloz can get his examine on later. You hold his little self close.

You do not lay frond to Gamzee beyond the removal of the last few bits of his grub-shell, instead leaving off to let him be still in the goopy puddle he is creating on the floor. 

Kurloz does not fight your hand, overcome with need to simply stare and gawk and gape at the new shaped his brother comes in. Instead he looks with his precious metal eyes gone wide and calls out, hushed, “Gamzee…?”

Your littlest is a second late replying, more than likely due to the effort of trying to remember how. He gives up on words for now and trills his acknowledgement, still lax and unmoving. His wriggler sounds are, apparently, unsatisfactory to your eldest, a fact you find hilariously hippocritical on account of his own preference to make noises instead of words. You prickle him gentle with the tips of two claws in light reprimand, and are unsurprisingly ignored. Kurloz tries again. 

“Gamzee?”

Another trill, this one perhaps a bit more annoyed, followed by a sound that may be an attempt at a growl. The sound is too motherfucking adorable for words. 

“...  _ tired.” _ Gamzee finally slurs. Kurloz chirps surprised like an actual response was unexpected, and begins to squirm again in earnest. You do not release him.

Instead, you reach out again to Gamzee and stop with your claws just inches from his skin, waiting. He picks his head back up enough to blink at you, and you take it for a sign that he is ready or nearly ready to be picked up and cleaned off. 

“You sleep well, child?” You ask him, and he snorts tiredly at you. Finally you rest a claw gentle on his head, stroke his hair. He twitches just a little when you near a horn, but beside that he is still, and you are comforted.  “Come, let's get you off to rest.” 

Gamzee nods and makes no move to either fight or assist as you scoop him up. Smaller than Kurloz, but still just a bit too big now to lie in one hand. You cradle him instead to your chest, where Kurloz reaches out immediately to poke at him. Gamzee gives an annoyed mutter of “motherfucker” and you growl warning. Kurloz slowly pulls his fronds back to his damn self, looking mutinous.

Both your boys held close to you, you again find yourself shouldering your way through the curtains, this time out of your wriggler’s rooms and into your own, then through that and into your ablutionsblock. 

You set the boys down on a cushion set aside just for that purpose and dig out a basin. They'd motherfucking drown if they tried to wash in your trap, still so small and young. Instead you fill the smaller container with warm water and kneel on te floor by them, rest the basin in front of you and reach again for Gamzee. Kurloz follows, as you knew he would, and once Gamzee is settled in the water and Kurloz has shed his sleeping clothes you pick him up and plop him in with his brother.

You still remember your fear, sweeps ago, when you gave Kurloz his first bath. He'd been a grub then still, small enough he could curl up to sleep in your palm, and you'd lived in constant anxiety, riddled with fright that you would do him harm unintentional in a moment of carelessness. 

You still hold that fear, you will admit, but it's better now. You are still gentle as you know how to be when you rub the pads of your fingers over Gamzee's skin to wipe off the slime, unable to stop yourself from prodding and poking to ensure that he is whole, at least on the surface. You are more careful still when you work it from his hair. You do not touch his horns, instead cupping water in your hand and pouring it down over him. He makes complaining noises all the while, still perhaps a bit too sensitive for touching, but he makes no move to fight your hands, and by the time you are done he is miserable and looking up at you through his dripping hair. Kurloz has cleaned his own self off, for all there was no need, and slides close to Gamzee in the water, looking earnest. Your youngest sniffles unhappily at him and Kurloz leans in to headbutt him gently. He doesn't knock their horns together, to his credit. 

Now cleaned, you help your boys from their trap and hand Kurloz the towels, which makes him beam and look up on you with grateful eyes. He is infinitely careful patting his brother dry while you dump the water from the basin and set it aside to be washed out later. Gamzee is less upset by the drying than he was by the washing, and though he is still damp you deem it well enough. Kurloz makes quick and and equally unfinished work of himself, but you scoop them both up anyway and carry them back to your block.

Your coon is plenty big enough for you, and even if it were a size too small it wouldn't matter, seeing as how both of your little hatchlings can fit on your chest with little effort or issue. You climb gratefully into the sopor and your boys do just that, Gamzee's movements clumsy and slow, Kurloz hovering worried and overbearing. You keep hands ready to catch should either go tipping off into the slime, but they are soon settled on your thorax over the beat of your pusher, and though they weigh hardly enough to be noticed you are comforted by their presence all the same.

In the evening you will need to drag Gamzee down to the medicullers to ensure everything is alright, and you don't figure Kurloz will be willing to sleep without his brother for a few days. The cocoon mess needs to be cleaned up, and you still haven't found a servant you trust in your personal blocks, let alone the ones reserved for your sons, which means you're gonna have to be the one to do it. Now that Gamzee is pupated it's time to start finding him feeders, and Kurloz is reaching that age that soon enough he’ll be starting combat training, too.

Damn you got a lot of shit to do. This whole lusus thing I'd harder than you figured it would be when you first took Kurloz in (was that only a few sweeps ago? Goddamn.)

For now though, your youngest is healthy and made anew and sleeping soundly, and your eldest is valiantly trying to keep his eyes on his brother, but losing. You make a note to have a banquet prepared to celebrate the second prince’s pupation, and also to feed Gamzee a shit ton of food after his check up come evening, and to send for private schoolfeeders who might meet your approval.

And then, blessedly, you follow your boys into sleep for the first time in days, and do not dream.

**Author's Note:**

> The mental image of Grand Highdad being big enough that Gamzee and Kurloz are basically dolls in comparison makes me very happy. Pick up your tiny sons Grandy. One in each hand. Just carry them around. They are so smol. Just do it.
> 
> There's more self-indulgent Makara family bullshit on my writing blog http://thisisallthehattersfault.tumblr.com/


End file.
